Glamour: Health minster Anna Soubry said she took up smoking because she liked the 'gorgeous' St Moritz packets

Health minister Anna Soubry today revealed ‘gorgeous’ cigarette packets persuaded her to take up smoking as a ‘symbol of glamour’.

The outspoken Tory MP said she fell victim to the ‘power’ of the green, gold and silver St Moritz packet as a 17-year-old in Worksop.

The coalition has shelved plans to force cigarettes to be sold in plain packaging, but Miss Soubry appeared to suggest there was a direct link between marketing and youngsters taking up smoking.

Speaking during a debate in Parliament, Miss Soubry also compared nicotine addiction to heroin dependence.

Earlier this year the government ditched plans for plain packets in the UK, with ministers saying they wanted more time to examine how a similar scheme has worked in Australia.

But Miss Soubry, 56, revealed that as a ‘weak’ teenager working in a toy shop she had been motivated to take up smoking by the powerful appeal of the packaging.

She told MPs: ‘I wanted to make it absolutely clear, like so many smokers I took up smoking before the age of 18. It's one of these moments where you always most want to confess.

‘It sounds very weak, I accept. But the power of the packet as a 17-year-old in Worksop bizarrely working in a toy shop, which in those days sold cigarettes."

She went on: ‘I have never forgotten the first time I bought a packet of cigarettes and I deliberately chose a packet of St Moritz because they were green and they were gorgeous and they were a symbol of, may I say, glamour.

‘And I distinctly remember, and I admit, it was the power of that package, it was the opening of the cellophane, the gold and the silver, that is so powerfully important in many people who as youngsters take up smoking.’

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However Ms Soubry, who has now given up smoking, said standardised packaging was ‘no silver bullet’ to cutting the number of young people who take up the habit.

She said: ‘There is no simple solution to the difficulty and the problem that we have in persuading that remaining 20 per cent of the population to give up smoking and of course to persuade our youngsters not to smoke.’

Symbol: Miss Soubry said should was drawn to the St Moritz packet in the early 1970s

Miss Soubry was elected in 2010, but has been tipped for promotion in the forthcoming reshuffle after her straight-talking spell at the Department of Health.

In a frank account of her own difficulties in giving up smoking, she suggested nicotine was more addictive than Class A drugs.

‘It's
often said that nicotine is actually more addictive even than heroin,
and whilst I've never directly experienced heroin I've experienced
enough clients when I was a criminal barrister to know how powerful the
heroin and cocaine is,’ Miss Soubry said.

‘But
goodness me, even they will tell you that when it comes to nicotine
it's a dreadful substance in its addiction, which would account for why
it is so many people, who like me smoked, found it so difficult to give
up.’

Delay: Ministers say they want to consider the impact of laws passed in Australia mean cigarette packets like these show no branding and the shocking effects of smoking

Tory MP Bob Blackman said it would be a ‘tragedy’ for children and their families to delay the introduction of plain packaging.

Mr Blackman, secretary of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Smoking and Health, said if the Government waits three years before introducing plain packs there would be 600,000 more children smoking.

He added: ‘The key here is stopping children starting smoking in the first place. The analysis produced by statisticians at Cancer Research, which I don't think is disputed, is that 207,000 children under the age of 16 start to smoke every year.

‘So if the Government wait three years, from December 2012, when standardised packages were introduced in Australia, around 600,000 children will begin to smoke before the Government take any action.

‘That's great news for Philip Morris and big tobacco. What a tragedy for the children, their families and their communities in later life.’